Update: Since writing this I’ve instead opted to work with Pico Lisp, this is not really a criticism of Weblocks per se, it has more to do with a general frustration with Common Lisp.

First of all, this article does not compare actual features of the two frameworks. Only the getting-started process, this will probably be enough information for you to decide in any case, just read on and you’ll understand what I mean.

Let’s begin with my expriences of UCW. UCW is really easy to install via the boxset file, just download and run the start.lisp file in the REPL and voila, you’re able to browse the samples.

The examples are run by some default server in UCW (not hunchentoot), you’ll probably want to replace it, it’s here that the problems begin. I opted for mod_lisp2 and Apache2. Compiling mod_lisp and installing it was not a problem, that is described fairly well in various places. It was time to get a new UCW project going so I started following the instructions over here: http://trac.common-lisp.net/ucw/wiki/UcwIntro

I was not able to find a better set of instructions on how to get going with UCW but if there is nothing better or more up to date than this then I think UCW will be superseded pretty soon. If there actually is some new kick ass how-to somewhere then I will recant and rewrite this piece to reflect that, but in the meantime, the above link is what we are left with and that leads to what follows below.

I dare you to try and set things up by following the UCWintro tutorial and using mod_lisp and ucwctl – if you don’t believe me when I say that the whole procedure is so convoluted and full of deprecated stuff it’s gonna drive you insane.

Go ahead, try it out, I’ll wait…

Back already? Now compare what you just exprienced with my installing Weblocks how to. I think you are now ready to join the small but growing Weblocks ranks.

The fact that the Weblocks Google group is active doesn’t make things worse for Weblocks either. Heck even the Weblocks creator himself answers noob requests from time to time, awesome!